Admission Free Festival

The Admission Free Festival is an annual art festival featuring artistic interventions, actions, performances, and installations in the urban context of Celje. The festival has taken place since 1990, but it only gained formal standing in 1999 as a project of the Art Society of Celje (DLUC), whose members run it in collaboration with the Celeia Celje Institute - Centre for Contemporary Arts, Art kino Metropol Celje, and (since 2012) the Celje Central Library.

Though centred on the Likovni Salon gallery, the festival invites different generations of visual and performance artists to turn the idea of the gallery inside out, so to speak, by moving the traditionally closed gallery space out into the streets of the Celje town centre, where it becomes both a display space, a depository of art materials and a place of random encounters and exchanges. Visitors, both unintentional and intentional, are not meant to "follow" the events of the festival in a traditional, linear way, but to discover the festival and allow it to spark reflection about the manifold ways art interacts with everyday life.

Programme

Projects presented at the festival reflect the current affairs of Celje and its citizens as well as broader social developments. Each festival centres on a common theme, which is chosen each year in advance. The jubilee 10th edition of the Admission Free Festival in 2009 addressed "intolerance", and other themes include "collectivism", the impact of sound on art, and "shame". The 2016 festival was themed "nature and light" and featured close cooperation with the Lighting Guerilla Festival. The 2018 version was dedicated to long-time Art Society of Celje member Adolf Mljač, and the theme of the twentieth anniversary was "a look back".

Interactivity

Festival interventions regularly involve the public. For example, at the 12th edition of the festival visitors were asked to bring sleeping bags to participate in Simon Macuh's work Bedroom – Good Night and Pleasant Dreams. In 2018 artist Jusuf Hadžifejzović set up his inquisitive Emptiness Shop in the framework of the festival, where guests could buy and sell "emptiness".

An important aspect of many projects is also hospitality and gastronomy. At the inaugural festival in 1999 Željko Opačak hosted Take a Little Piece of my Heart: featuring works by Andreja Džakušič and Boris Oblišar, the installation expressed how the co-operative participation of food by both the artists and the public and creates new social spaces. At the 2013 festival, Mark Požlep presented his Drunk Cook Book and Manja Vadla hosted a picnic.

Past festivals

From the start a great deal of the organisation of the festival has been in the hands of the Celje Visual Artists Association. specially active ones have been Franc Purg (during the first beginnings of the festival), Manja Vadla (from 1990 to 2010), Željko Opačak, Andreja Džakušič, Simon Macuh, and others.

Among the artworks presented at the early festival editions there were The Buyer Sets the Price (2005) by Milena Kosec, A Lucky Raffle Ticket (2005) by Manja Vadla, The Counts of Celje Today and Still (2000) by Dalibor B. Zupančič and others. Artists seek to shed light on the local situation and look for suggestions to improve the social environment, such as Litter (2005) by Franc Purg or his more recent action that included growing paradise at the 12th Admission Free Festival. Since its beginnings the festival has expanded and besides the members of Art Society of Celje there are also many guest artists from Slovenia and abroad.

The 13th Festival also included some collaborative projects as public reading that took place at many city locations and was done by Petra Kapš, Zoran Srdić Janežič, Sara Heitlinger, and others.

External links

Admission Free Festival

Contents

Programme

Interactivity

Past festivals

See also

External links

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